Form #4

The erect sepals of Form #4 resemble those of all forms of E. recurvata and differ from the spreading sepals of typical E. bicolor and Forms #1, #2 and #3.

Origin of this form : Above Lago Anteojos, near third station (Loma Redonda) on the teleferico ascending Pico Bolivar from the city of Mérida, 4025 m, locality is cold, relatively wet and often shrouded by fog.

Description by Ch. Uhl in Cactus and Succulent Journal US 65 (2): 86-87. 1993 :

Stems up to only about 15 cm tall, much shorter than in typical E. bicolor, but longer than in typical E. recurvata, most collections of which are virtually acaulescent; commenly branched at the base.

Leaves usually not restricted to a terminal rosette but distributed along most of the stem. Leaves in the wild are ascending (but more spreading in cultivation), generally glaucous, with reddish distal margins and strongly flushed with reddish purple, but entirely green in one plant. Leaves of the same plants in cultivation are bluish-glaucous, with much less purple; elliptical to oblanceolate, up to 40 mm long, but mostly much shorter, mostly 12 - 13 mm but up to 17 mm wide near the middle, and 6 mm thick and often obtusely angled below; about one-third to one-half as thick as wide, proportionately much thicker than in typical E. bicolor or in Forms #1 and #2.

Floral stems green at the base, shading to dull rosy red upward.

Sterile bracts colored and shaped like the leaves, smaller in size upward, from about 23 x 8 mm to 11 x 4 mm, with pale spurs at the base.

Fertile bracts are adnate to their subtended pedicels for 1 mm or so, unlike most plants of Echeveria recurvata, where the pedicels commonly are adnate to the inflorescence axis for several mm above the axil of the subtending bract.

Pedicels are generally 1 - 2 mm long (but the lowest up to 8 mm long in a cultivated plant), tending to turn toward one side, with two reddish bracteoles each about 5 mm long.

Sepals erect, nearly equal, about 6 mm long. Corolla pentagonal.

Petals a bit keeled, 9 - 10 mm long, with a 1 mm mucro, yellow, flushed with red on the keels and exposed parts outside and with tips that spread 5 mm apart.

Carpels pale red in the distal 1 - 2 mm, erect at anthesis, but spreading when ripe.